Centers to focus on preventative/outpatient care

Pocono Medical Center officials want to keep potential patients out of the hospital.

CHRISTINA TATU

Pocono Medical Center officials want to keep potential patients out of the hospital.

That's why they are putting the focus on preventative care and the outpatient side of their business, said PMC President and Chief Executive Officer Kathleen Kuck during a recent interview about the health system's Annual Report to the Community.

"We talked about bringing in the immediate care centers. We now have three that we put in place. They provide care to people who may not have otherwise gotten it except through very expensive emergency room visits," Kuck said.

The immediate care centers offer care to patients outside of regular office hours, such as on the weekend or when they get home from work.

Services those centers provide include on-site laboratory and X-rays.

Also in the works are two "medical homes," one located in Bartonsville and the other planned for Brodheadsville.

Hospital officials broke ground on the Bartonsville site last week, which they hope to have open in late 2013.

The idea behind the medical home facilities is that they provide a mix of primary care physicians and specialists close to home.

Pocono Medical Center officials hope — because everything is centrally located — that patients will be more likely to seek preventative care, thus possibly avoiding trips to the emergency room.

After last year's Annual Report to the Community, the hospital formed a "steering committee," including local law enforcement officers, educators, transportation workers, member of the local Chamber of Commerce and local government officials, Kuck said.

Much of their discussions have been "focused on getting the chronic disease in our community under control, like smoking and obesity," she said. "It's now a very concentrated effort where the community is coming in and telling us how we can best assess that behavior and provide treatment before it becomes an emergency."

The group has especially focused on behavioral health care.

"The group really focused in on two areas. Suicide risk is one of them," Kuck said.

The group found suicide risk is especially high among middle and high school-aged children.

"If we look at the transfers out of our emergency room for more care, we have a significant number of kids in need of mental health care," Kuck said.

Currently, Pocono Medical Center does not have inpatient mental health facilities for children, although it does provide those services for adults.

"If you can't get the providers to come to the area, you can contract with a child psychologist somewhere else," she said.

A special camera set-up allows the doctor and patient to see each other during counseling sessions. Electronic medical records also make it easy for doctors outside the area to have access to a local patient's entire history.

The plan is to try to keep people healthy and out of the hospital," Kuck said.

The hospital's Annual Report to the Community was released earlier this month.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.